by Priti Ramamurthy

Excerpt From Essay

"In the summer of 1999,1 returned to one of the villages in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh state in South India where I have done fieldwork off and on 1 for the last 15 years. I went to see Jamulamma and her husband, Sanjanna, who live in the Madi-gere, the caste-segregated locality of the village where they and other low-caste Madigas live. Jamulamma's household owns no land and she earns a living of about 20 rupees (US$.50) a day as a field laborer. It was to her that I asked a question that had begun to puzzle me, "Why is it that the area under cotton [in Jamulamma's village] has gone up and more women and children are working in the cotton fields, but fewer of them are wearing cotton saris?""